how to get started with helping the project [...]

[Eric Rostetter]

Quoting Marcus Lauer <marcus.lauer at nyu.edu>:

>         As a lurker myself, I'm more inclined to side with Mr.
> Popovitch.  His original criticisms about there not being an e-mail
> about the website going down and about there not being an alternate
> leader in case something happens to Mr. Keating's ability to communicate
> aren't unreasonable. 

I agree.  I wish there was an email sent out about the web site problems
also.

> That doesn't mean that they're right, but just

I think his point was correct, but the way he went about arguing it
caused it to not to be as helpful as we'd have wanted.

> that they're the sort of thing which should lead to a discussion.  I
> mean, what would happen to the project if Mr. Keating just disappeared
> one day?  Is there any contingency plan in place at all?

Good question.  I think the project would recover and carry on, but I don't
know there are any plans on how it would do that, and without such plans
it would take a much longer time to recover.

>         Again, while I don't agree with Mr. Popovitch's position on
> everything, I think that he has made some legitimate criticisms of the
> project and I think that they got ignored 

I don't think they were ignored.  Rather, it snowballed into some idiotic
arguing which prevents any action from being taken on his original complaints.

> project.  Criticism can be a valuable contribution, and criticism coming
> from outside of the core group working on a project can help illustrate
> problems which they might miss.

Agreed.  Well argued, polite criticism is even better. :)
 
>         For example, take Mr. Popovitch's Bugzilla/Midnight Commander
> comment.  I'm inclined to agree.

With what part of it?

> The one time I tried to submit a bug
> to Bugzilla, I couldn't figure out how.

Then you need to ask for help, and ask for us to either create documentation
to meet your needs, or provide a link to such information.

> Admittedly, I didn't spend a
> whole lot of time on it, but I did find the time to figure out that bug
> in some detail so that I could report it.

It used to be stated in the docs, and has been covered many times on the
mailing list, that posting the bug report to the mailing list is
a valid alternative to using the bugzilla system.  If you have info,
and can't figure out bugzilla, e-mail it to the list.

I'll update my TODO list to include making this clear once again in the
docs, and it seems to have been edited out over time.

> More recently, when I tried
> to figure out why nfs-utils was in testing I couldn't find anything on
> it.  Every now and then I'm willing to contribute to FL, but I'm having
> trouble.

I agree.  All I can do is say two things, which you probably don't want
to hear, but it is really all I can say to help:

1) Ask for help on the mailing list
2) Try helping in another fashion (we could use help in other areas).

> Mr. Popovitch described this aspect of FL as "painful" and
> "difficult" (and I notice that the thread was simply dropped after that
> post).

Not if you count my replies to it.

> I would be more specific in saying that perhaps it should be a
> goal of the FL project to put something more detailed than just "Report
> your test results in the Bugzilla system." on the wiki so that the
> newbies have an easier time of picking it up.

I'll put the mailing list alternative statement on my TODO list.

> I suspect that this is
> the sort of thing that a core group on a project would miss, in this
> case because they all know how to use Bugzilla already and think it's
> easy.

No.  If you go back to the start of the project, you'll find long threads
of me asking how to use bugzilla, wiki, irq, pgp signatures, etc.  I may be
part of the supposed "core group" but I had to learn all this too.  And I
don't think any of it is easy to learn.  That doesn't mean I don't think
it is easy to participate in the project though ;)
 
> and that's great, but are they really unwilling to listen to people who
> say "things could be better, here's how"?  Especially coming from people
> who _have_ done at least a little work for FL?  I sure hope not.  One of

I think you will find FL very supportive of nice, polite criticism.
Not everyone in FL.  Maybe not even most of them.  But as a group,
you will find that the criticism is taken and used.  Sometimes it
may not seem like it.  Sometimes it takes time.

>         Again, when the hard feelings from this flamewar have left
> everyone, I hope we can all go back and think about what has been said.
> The FL project is not perfect.  There are criticisms of it to be made,
> and I think that some of the ones made this time were legit, or at least
> worth discussing.

Agreed.  But, the danger is that it will get lost in the other stupid
arguments which take up much more bandwidth, and much more of FL's time,
than the actual valid criticisms do.

-- 
Eric Rostetter